Trump delivers shocking low blow to former official whose wife was killed in terrorist attack

Donald Trump implied Monday that the former administration official who resigned last week over the Iran war cheated on his late wife, who was killed in a terrorist attack.

“Look, I’m not a fan of the guy,” Trump told reporters Monday morning about Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who claimed the strikes on Iran were unjustified because the country was not an imminent threat to America.

“If you look at his Truths, or whatever he went on,” Trump said of Kent’s social media posts, “he was all for everything. All of a sudden, he wasn’t.”

Trump said he met Kent, whose late wife, Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in an ISIS suicide bombing in Syria in 2019, during his wife’s dignified transfer.

“He remarried fairly quickly,” Trump claimed Monday. “His wife was killed, and I felt badly for him.”

Kent married his current wife, Heather Kaiser Kent, in 2023, four years after Shannon Kent’s death.

Trump then accused Kent of disloyalty, pointing out that he offered Kent a job in his administration after two failed congressional runs.

“You know, it’s a shame,” Trump said.

“And this is what he does to me, you know? Being a nice guy doesn’t pay off too much.”

Instead of “letting” Kent “live out life,” Trump said he “brilliantly let my people call him and offer him a job in security, essentially, in the White House.”

Trump slammed Kent’s resignation letter, which was posted to social media and claimed the president was persuaded to launch the war in Iran “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent had previous ties to antisemitism and right-wing extremism. It’s an antisemitic trope to suggest Jewish Americans have disproportionate control of media narratives.

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Kent acknowledged that during one of his two failed congressional campaigns a political consultant set up a call joined by Nick Fuentes. A popular right-wing influencer, Fuentes has said that Jews are holding the U.S. “hostage” and once proclaimed that “Hitler was awesome, Hitler was right.”

The president accused Kent of saying Iran was not an imminent threat to the U.S. “to get publicity.

“Now he probably signed up with CNN or maybe signed up with your division of Newsmax” as a contributor, Trump said, pointing to a reporter from the conservative station who he said was “not doing a very good job.”

Donald Trump

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